Minister's doubts on Hips... but they're here to stay

NEW housing minister Margaret Beckett has distanced herself from Home Information Packs by admitting they are not working as well as they should.

Mrs Beckett said she recognised the £350 packs introduced last year to provide key information to home buyers had their limitations.

Industry experts claim Hips have made the housing market crisis worse by adding to cost and bureaucracy for sellers while consumer groups say they are confusing and of little value.

Mrs Beckett is thought to be the first housing minister to express doubts over the effectiveness of the scheme. Her predecessors Caroline Flint and Yvette Cooper were vocal supporters.

However, she ruled out scrapping Hips while giving evidence to the Commons local government select committee, insisting they had some positive impact on the market. "Given all the abuse that Hips suffered I think they've been relatively successful," she told MPs. "But that doesn't mean that they're fulfilling their potential.

"I think that given their limitations they have some degree of beneficial impact but I fully accept that they're not, perhaps, the perfect vehicle we might wish for. I accept they're not working to the potential they could."

The housing minister came under pressure from Tories on the committee, who claimed Hips had made selling a house more expensive and choked in paperwork, to axe the scheme.

Mrs Beckett said: "I don't think there's any point in suspending the scheme. It's not really something that's going to make a big difference as to how the housing market is going."

She said the bulk of the £350 cost went on the energy performance certificate, which sellers are legally required to provide, while the rest would have had to be paid for before anyway.

"There's actually very little saving from getting rid of Hips while there is a bit of a saving from people already having them," she said.

Industry experts claim many sellers are being forced to fork out for more than one pack because the information contained in them is soon rendered out of date by the troubled property market.